Mac OS X developers have been given a few extra months to accept the Mac App Store app sandboxing requirements… or to forget about selling their apps through Apple’s store altogether.

Originally, the deadline was November 1st, but Apple has since uncharacteristically extended the deadline to March 1, 2012. After that, all apps sold in the Mac App Store must use Mac OS X Lion’s new sandboxing framework. That framework is another thing Lion had adopted from iOS and is meant to increase security on the Mac.

With the deadline extended, developers now have about four months to decide on whether they will support sandboxing in their apps. The problem? If they do, some apps will become just shadows of their former selves.